James &amp; Monique&#39;s RV Travels

We had an especially nice peaceful day touring the Botanical Garden at Clemson University and then enjoying a great lunch at Clemson’s Madren Conference Center. It really reminded me of why we enjoy being able to tour the country in our RV.

We have visited the SC Botanical Garden several times. Our house in Lexington had a very shady yard. One of our successful shade plants was hosta’s. Clemson has the best collection of hosta’s we have ever seen.

The gardens have some other unique features like the Caboose Garden donated by the Class of 1939.

Another is the Guard House Bell. It hung in the No.1 barracks and was sounded during the day to announce class changes, etc. A side note - Thomas Green Clemson who donated the land and money to start Clemson directed in his will in 1888 that the University be modeled after Mississippi A&M which is now Mississippi State University. MSU is where Monique and I met and were married. The Clemson founders came to Mississippi State to visit, and I believe some of their first buildings were copied from those at MSU. Both schools were early Land Grant Colleges and started with an emphasis on agriculture and engineering. For many years they were all male military colleges where the students wore military uniforms and were regulated by a military regimen. The Guard House Bell hearkens back to those days.

There are many lovely aspects to the gardens. A little waterfall:

A bridge over a small pond:

Pretty lace cap hydrangeas and ferns;

Beautiful rhododendron in bloom:

After our tour, we went over the Clemson Madren Conference Center. It is a very nice complex with a hotel, restaurant and conference facilities.

It sits on Lake Hartwell and is adjacent to the Clemson golf course.

I attended several conferences there while working at BellSouth. A nice garden walkway has been added since my last visit.

They serve an outstanding lunchtime buffet. We highly recommend both the Botanical Gardens and the lunch at the Madren Center.

Hagood Mill

We met a nice lady who had been camping here for a month. She told us about Hagood Mill in Pickens, SC, which is about 40 miles from the campground. We wanted to look around the Pickens area, so we drove over to tour the mill and the Pickens County Museum. Both are well worth a visit.

Hagood Mill is a grist mill built around 1845. It operated commercially until 1966 and is now a branch of the Pickens County Museum.

Several other buildings have been relocated to the site including two log cabins. The first one below dates from 1791.

There is also a steam operated 1890 Cotton Gin.

Plus a visitor’s center and gift shop, blacksmith shop, simulated moonshine still, and an outdoor stage.

Of course I had to photograph some of the pretty flowers.

I still had some wildflower seeds left from our trip to the Vermont Wildflower Farm. I gave these to the gentleman at the visitor's center. He was happy to get them and promised to plant them. They should look nice in this setting.

Another interesting artifact was a soapstone rock where early American Indians had started carving rock bowls. You can seem the beginnings of the bowl shapes in the rock.

Every 3rd Saturday of the month, the mill operates to grind corn or wheat. In addition 20-30 artisans come to demonstrate old time skills like blacksmithing, weaving, yarn spinning, basket weaving, making moonshine, etc. The cotton gin is also operated. Various local bluegrass and country musicians give performances on the outdoor stage. We were sorry we did not know about this event since we were here the 3rd Saturday in May. We plan to come back sometime to attend this monthly festival.

Carter & Holmes Orchids

We took an enjoyable day trip from the Barnyard RV Park to Carter & Holmes Orchids. This orchid nursery is about 3 miles outside Newberry, SC, which is about 40 miles north of Columbia.

Carter & Holmes is a small privately owned business. They have been growing orchids for 65 years starting right after WWII. They ship worldwide and have hundreds of varieties.

We were allowed to just wander through the greenhouses. We encountered delightful employees who stopped their work to explain how orchids are grown and what they were doing at the moment. This lady was in the process of selecting plants to be shipped to a man in Chile who is trying to establish the largest private collection of orchids in the world.

I was surprised to learn how hardy some varieties of orchids are, especially Phalaenopsis.

This is the variety you most often see for sale at places like Lowe’s or Publix in their flower sections. The blooms can last up to 4 months and do well in a typical household environment. They are an excellent plant if you have allergies since they produce no airborne pollen. Orchids depend upon bees, insects or hummingbirds for pollination. We bought a small one that had 3 blooms and 3 buds. You only water the plants every 4-5 days. After a few waterings over a couple of weeks all 3 buds had opened. All the blooms were still beautiful when we got ready to leave. We gave the plant to a lady in the front office of the RV park who has several other orchids at home. We were afraid we would damage the plant when packing or traveling down the road.

Carter & Holmes grows new plants from seeds or from tissue cuttings (clones). Each seed pod will produce 1,000 or so seeds. In the wild only a few will land in the right environment and survive. In the greenhouse, Carter & Holmes can germinate all 1,000. They also cross breed or hybridize new varieties. The man who does this stopped to show us 2 grains of pollen he had collected into a tiny glass vial. He was on the way to use it to pollenate with a different variety.

The seeds germinate and grow in these large vials for a year or more before being transplanted.

The plant we purchased was in a small 3” pot and was about 3 years old. Carter & Holmes has orchids with a wide variety of ages. The oldest was collected in the jungles of Columbia, South America in 1888.

If you are in the area, Carter & Holmes is well worth a visit. You might become “hooked” and want to bring a few orchids home to enjoy.